Factor IXa is a plasma serine protease involved in the regulation of blood coagulation. While blood coagulation is a necessary and important part of the regulation of an organism's homeostasis, abnormal blood coagulation can also have deleterious effects. For instance, thrombosis is the formation or presence of a blood clot inside a blood vessel or cavity of the heart. Such a blood clot can lodge in a blood vessel blocking circulation and inducing a heart attack or stroke. Thromboembolic disorders are the largest cause of mortality and disability in the industrialized world.
Blood clotting is a process of control of the blood stream essential for the survival of mammals. The process of clotting, and the subsequent dissolution of the clot after wound healing has taken place, commences after vascular damage, and can be divided into four phases. The first phase, vasoconstriction or vasocontraction, can cause a decrease in blood loss in the damaged area. In the next phase, platelet activation by thrombin, platelets attach to the site of the vessel wall damage and form a platelet aggregate. In the third phase, formation of clotting complexes leads to massive formation of thrombin, which converts soluble fibrinogen to fibrin by cleavage of two small peptides. In the fourth phase, after wound healing, the thrombus is dissolved by the action of the key enzyme of the endogenous fibrinolysis system, plasmin.
Two alternative pathways can lead to the formation of a fibrin clot, the intrinsic and the extrinsic pathway. These pathways are initiated by different mechanisms, but in the later phase they converge to give a common final path of the clotting cascade. In this final path of clotting, clotting factor X is activated. The activated factor X is responsible for the formation of thrombin from the inactive precursor prothrombin circulating in the blood. The formation of a thrombus on the bottom of a vessel wall abnormality without a wound is the result of the intrinsic pathway. Fibrin clot formation as a response to tissue damage or an injury is the result of the extrinsic pathway. Both pathways comprise a relatively large number of proteins, which are known as clotting factors. The intrinsic pathway requires the clotting factors V, VIII, IX, X, XI and XII and also prekallikrein, high molecular weight kininogen, calcium ions and phospholipids from platelets. Clotting factor IX can be activated by means of the intrinsic pathway and the extrinsic pathway. The activation of factor IXa is thus a central point of intersection between the two pathways of activation of clotting. Factor IXa has an important role in blood clotting. Defects in factor IXa lead to hemophilia B, while increased concentrations of factor IXa in the blood lead to a significantly increased risk of thrombosis formation (Weltermann A, et al., J Thromb Haemost. 2003; 1: 28-32). The regulation of factor IXa activity can reduce thrombus formation in animal models (Feuerstein G Z, et al., Thromb Haemost. 1999; 82: 1443-1445). Vijaykumar et al., Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters (2006), 16 (10), 2796-2799, discloses hydroxy pyrazole based factor IXa inhibitors.